HEAT INTEGRATION OF PLASMA REACTORS FOR ELECTRIFIED FERTILIZER PRODUCTION

Nitricity Inc. is developing a novel fertilizer production system to turn air, water, and electricity into nitrate based fertilizers. We use a plasma reactor to fix nitrogen into nitric oxide and then absorb this into water to form nitric acid and other nitrate based fertilizers. This grant will build on our phase I work to scale up the reactor and improve heat management and recovery in the reactor. In our commercialization analysis, we identified increased scale as a critical path item for bringing our tech to market. It will allow us to realize economies of scale on the balance of plant and better respond to the customer's needs. In our technical process analysis we found that heat recovery is a pathway to dramatically reduce the total energy consumption of our process. Most of the energy that goes into our reactor is released as high grade heat. Recovering this energy will allow us to offset some electricity use and pumping energy. Our main technical objectives are:(O1) Design and build prototype 15 kW reactor(s) capable of 20 kWh/lb NWe will design and build a prototype reactor capable of fixing nitrogen at a cost of 20 kWh/lbN or less at a power level of 15 kW or more. We anticipate that the results from phase I will allow us to scale(O2) Design and implement heat recovery to the reactor from O1, perform a multivariable sweep to understand the heat transfer.We will use CAD software and measurement of reactor temperature profile to design a heat recovery system, likely including element from fire-tube boilers and shell and tube heat exchangers. The key deliverable will be a physical reactor prototype ready to test for objective 3. We will then explore the parameter space of this reactor, with variables like flow, pressure, power, and cooling water flow rate.(O3) Achieve 80% thermal efficiency of the heat recovery, produce steam of at least 150 psigWe will recover 80% of input energy, defined as the enthalpy of steam divided by the energy input to the reactor. We will do this in the form of high pressure (150 psig) steam. We have identified this as a reasonable input to a heat recovery cycle or steam driven turbomachinery.